What does it mean when an album or song is “remastered”?

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What does it mean when an album or song is “remastered”?

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18 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

“Mastering” usually means taking a whole song that’s been recorded and making the final track sound the best it possibly can. Remastering is doing that again for a song that’s already come out before. Sometimes modern equipment can help us make a song sound better in ways that old technology wasn’t able to, or sometimes we change things just because more people like a different type of sound now than they used to.

When a song is remastered, it might be made louder, made to have more bass or treble so that different parts of the song stand out more, and compressed to make the difference between the loudest and quietest parts of the song smaller, so that it sounds smoother or more “glued together.” Some people like the remastered versions of songs best because they sound more like something that might be produced today, and some people prefer the older versions.

Anonymous 0 Comments

When an album is recorded, each piece is recorded separately. A separate “track” is made for the singer and each instrument. The different tracks are then mixed together, and the result of that mix is the master.

Time, taste, and technology changes, however. For example, when the Beach Boys originally recorded “Pet Sounds”, it was mastered to mono. Partially this was because stereo wasn’t very popular yet, and partially it was because Brian Wilson was deaf in one ear and couldn’t hear the difference. When the album was re-released in 1997, a new stereo mix was created from the original tracks, and a new master, or “re master” version was created.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Mixing and mastering is the stage in audio production where they take all of the individually recorded tracks containing the different instruments and takes, combine them together into one track, and do all of the audio processing needed to make everything sound the best it can – things like adjusting the eq of each part, adding effects like reverbs, and so on.

Remastering is where they redo the mastering process in an attempt to fix any flaws an album has sonically, and adjust the end result to be more suited to modern styles and listening.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Mastering is the last step of recording. A mastering engineer’s job is to stop the end listener from having to adjust volume and tone between tracks. So, they make a collection of tracks sound like an album.

They also meet technical requirements of the media the end user will be listening to. With different recording media there are different concerns. For example, with vinyl too much bass will cause the needle to jump the groove and high frequencies need to be amplified to properly cut a groove. There is a standard EQ applied to vinyl to compensate for these issues with the media. When a song meant for vinyl is remastered level and compression is redone from the original recording to take advantage of the new media.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Remastering a track is taking the original mix done by the mix engineer and doing a new “master,” on it. The point of a master is to get the best quality version of a song for current playback equipment. So when you see say the version of Dark Side of the Moon that was remastered in 2011 the original stereo mix downs have not been changed, but rather the “master copy,” has been improved to sound better on more modern audio systems like your phone and soundbar. In 1973 the master of Dark Side would sound different than the 2011 remaster because the 1973 master was intended for vinyl and tape playback rather than digital streaming.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Lot of misinformation in this thread. Mastering, whether it’s the first time or a later REmastering, has nothing to do with mixing/remixing.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I have noticed that in many cases remastered versions have more loudness, but much less dynamic range.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Listen to the different mixes of The Stooges – Raw Power

David Bowie tried his hardest to clean it up but it was a shit recording to begin with. Some people prefer the iggy mix because it sounds a little more raw and punk rock.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFCF4EJ-va8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFCF4EJ-va8)

Anonymous 0 Comments

Sound engineer and it doesn’t seem like any answer so far is a true ELI5 so here’s my take:

Mixing a song is making sure all the instruments in that song blend together perfectly. Say you have 8 instruments, you’re mixing them together like ingredients to make a cake batter.

You then send that cake batter to a person who has a really expensive oven and a baker who knows how to use that oven to turn that batter in to the best cake possible.

As time goes on, better and better ovens and better and better bakers who know how to use these fancy ovens pop up due to technology, and better understanding of how the technology works. So though we still have the original recipe for the batter, you can stand to make a remastered version of the cake to sell to people.

Typically the mastering engineer doesn’t have the individual ingredients to the cake batter, just the already mixed batter to work with. But they have some super fancy equipment, tons of experience, and an excellent ear/palette to know how to turn that batter in to a better cake than the original.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Recording/Producing a song is like mining a diamond.

Mixing is like cutting a diamond.

Mastering is like polishing a diamond.